Voiceflex News

Nominet are beginning to push their ENUM contract for +44, which they have for the next 5 years. This makes Nominet the central provider of ENUM in UK. ENUM just allows a telephone to be turned into an IP address (with a bit of help from DNS). So does this mean free calls between end users, well yes, but only if they are compatible PBXs (which will happen over time) and they open up their firewalls to anyone who wants to call them. Suddenly, ENUM doesn’t sound as inviting. Could you imagine receiving the same amount of voice calls as SPAM messages. So your SPAM filter has improved things a lot, but you can’t employ all the same mechanisms with SPIT (SPam over Internet Telephony) as you can with SPAM. You can filter the source IP address using blacklists, or only accept calls from within the UK, but this will not stop all SPIT. Imagine just 10 calls getting through per day, it would be seriously annoying, in fact 5 per day would send me into a rage. Once, the SPIT community has a number that answers you’ll start getting 50, 100 calls... ok, so by then you will have changed your number and you’ll call/email everyone to tell them.

So ENUM has some serious floors. Spammers will love ENUM, just like they do email but voice is more intrusive than any email and paying a service provider to block SPIT isn’t exactly a free service. This couple with the security flaws, means that we have some real issues with the nuts and bolts of ENUM. Maybe you will use ENUM, but opt your numbers out of the system, thus getting the benefits without the pain. That’s great until it becomes apparent that almost everyone who answers their phone has opted out. Alternatively, you’ll let your SIP provider deal with ENUM, but again you’ll end up paying at some point.

Making PBXs from different vendors to spontaneously connect to each other will come in time, but I’d expect this to be 4 or 5 years away for all PBXs. There are currently 3 major PBX vendors who don’t even have SIP implemented or have implemented their own version.

There are other ENUM projects out there, the BT one is of more interest to network providers in the short term. The Nominet ENUM could really help with number porting, but ENUM is really of more interest to network providers than to end-users.

ENUM is a great idea that has been around for a number of years. But the internet isn’t a great place to open yourself up to, unprotected. Just remember to click the ex-enum directory box until you have really worked out how it benefits you and more importantly how you stop unsolicited calls.

About Voiceflex
Voiceflex, a division of Frontier Systems, was established to provide advanced IP telephony (VoIP) services for UK businesses. Bringing the reliability of the Internet to the telephone, VoiceFlex is an advocate of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) - the latest technology allowing voice calls to be made over the Internet. Voiceflex uses its own SIP technology offering developed completely in-house, to provide low cost, ISDN replacement lines that provide the best possible call quality, inexpensively with the flexibility that comes from using the Internet. VoiceFlex can also port any telephone number regardless of geographic location. Products include SIP Trunks and SIP Centrex.

Voiceflex offices are based in Piccadilly(London) and Coventry.

If you require more information, please contact Paul Taylor on 020 3004 1990 or email ptaylor@voiceflex.com

www.voiceflex.com